Kind of a clever gimmicky tongue-in-cheek article about our Once-and-Future-Gubernador-Elect, who is on vacation for a last moment of sanity before plunging into the bottomless pit of trying to make sense of this place. This is a travel article with lotsa links to places to go in AZ, which despite its despicable politics is a terrific place to visit.

The details of this trip are hazy, and Brown’s office didn’t immediately respond to requests for clarification on Thursday and Friday morning. No doubt some people are perplexed that California’s new Democrat governor would take his holiday in a state that some liberal Californians are boycotting over its stance on undocumented immigrants.

But for many Californians and veteran Arizona visitors, there’s a simpler question here: You’re about to become head of a conflict-riven household that’s about $25 billion in debt. Shouldn’t you be in Las Vegas?

I'm sure they'd comp ya up one side and down the other if ya show up already $25B in the hole! A reverse whale. Heh.

But no. If it were still 1977, we’d suspect that the once-and-future governor was in Sedona, clinging to the back of a Pink Jeep as it rambles toward an alleged energy vortex (and that had better be clean energy). Or maybe he’d be in the hinterlands near Flagstaff, sprawled on the roof at one of those sky-watchers’ B&Bs, where the moonbeams come streaming down bright as day.

And come to think of it, doesn’t Linda Ronstadt have family in Arizona?

I think Linda lives in Frisco now, which already has a lotta Pink Everythings, but California could sure as shit use a few Clean Energy Spiritual-and-Otherwise Vortices! Available at the gift shop as you exit Sedona.

Couple more adjustments made since last night (seems to me that the problem is limited to those to viewing the page in Google Chrome). Again I ask, for those who had problems with the page displaying properly, is it better now?

Catherine Britt (website) - Sweet Emmylou (Music Video). A tribute to the great Emmylou Harris. From the album "Catherine Britt" through ABC Music/Unviersal Music Australia. Produced by Rusty Gate Films.

Friday, November 12, 2010

A few of you have mentioned the page doesn't display correctly. I made some ... alterations. For those who were having problems; could you let me know if it's corrected? Everything looks fine on my machines so I'm guessing about what went wrong.

"I want to be a champion of public service," Pacquiao said Tuesday, after a workout for his Saturday night world junior-middleweight title fight against Mexico's Antonio Margarito at Cowboys Stadium.

Since taking political office this summer as a congressional representative of the Sarangani province, Pacquiao has focused on improving his countrymen's livelihoods, starting with improved medical care and education.

The causes are rooted in Pacquiao's childhood memories of surviving poverty, sleeping on dirt floors and selling cigarettes on the street.

"No money to buy food, hungry," Pacquiao said. "I'll always remember my past. When I was young, I had no one to help [me].

"I believe I'm supposed to be doing this."

I think I've got a new hero and role model. Get some, Manny!

Of course, the ruling elite in this country would never permit a MAN like that to make any headway in our political system. By being for the people he'd fuck up the gravy train. Maybe they'd let him mow their lawns.

Just as an aside, I'm not much of a fight fan. I don't care at all to see heavyweights shake the Earth while they pound the crap outta one another, but I like to see the smaller men, mostly Latinos and Filipinos (Asian Latinos, to my way of thinking) duke it out. They've got a lot of heart for the game. It's not the size of the dog in the fight that counts, it's the size of the fight in the dog.

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, of course, had a head start. After being ousted from office in 2005 by Angela Merkel, Schröder immediately set to work penning his memoirs, a document called " Decisions: My Life in Politics" which, when it came out in 2006, was not particularly complimentary towards US President George W. Bush.

He said Bush used "almost Biblical semantics" and, in reference to the US president's repeated mentions of his faith, wrote: "The problem begins when the impression is created that political decisions are a result of this conversation with God."

On Tuesday, the day that Bush's own presidential memoirs, "Decision Points," finally hit the shelves, Schröder went even further. "The former American president is not telling the truth," he said on Tuesday in Berlin.

...

Ya think?

...

Schröder isn't the only one this week to have cast doubt on the veracity of Bush's book. British officials have rejected the former president's assertion that waterboarding, an interrogation method considered to be torture, led to information which "helped break up plots to attack American diplomatic facilities abroad, Heathrow airport, and Canary Wharf in London, and multiple targets in the United States." The line is a reference to the interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in the US. [my ems]

...

So, we have world leaders and statesmen calling him a liar and he admitted to being a war criminal in his book. Can we take him away now?

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Remember the people who've put their lives on the line, past, present, and, with all certainty, future. Too many have left parts, or all, of themselves on battlefields around the world, doing what they do at the behest of politicians who respect neither their service nor their lives.

Whether the cause is just or not, it is not for them to judge. When you take an oath, especially in a volunteer army, to defend our nation, you agree to give your life to preserve the principles and ideals that made this country great and unique. You hope those above you will not waste or misuse it.

To my brothers and sisters in arms, who have served and are on the front lines now, I doff my cap and raise a toast. Thanks for being there with me when I did my thing, thanks to all those who came before, and a prayer for those who are looking over the barrels of their rifles now.

I appreciate thanks for my service from other Veterans and some other folks as well, but I come from a time when there were signs that said "Dogs and Marines keep off the lawn", when military service was reviled or at best ignored, and frankly I think the Repug militarism that has made people thank us now is a crock of shit. I have told people "Bullshit. Where were you forty years ago when thanks might have mattered?" and it shocks them, shocks them I say! Maybe I'm just an irascible old fart, or maybe I see hypocrisy under color of 'patriotism'.

Vietnam was less of a criminal act than Bush's War For Iraq's Oil. The difference now is that nobody blames the troopers for it or for going where their overlords send them. I suppose that's a good thing.

Here's the last coupla verses from Rudyard Kipling's "Tommy". He knew.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints; While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, fall be'ind", But it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind, There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind, O it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind.

You fuckin' well bet Tommy sees. He sees a country that begrudges him anything after he's no longer in service, that wants to privatize and charge him for medical care, that sees a vet living under a bridge from PTSD and claims he has a 'pre-existing personality defect' that his own service used to deny him benefits and help, that tries to rip off his death benefits from his family, that offers him a GI Bill and puts up obstacles to keep him from getting his lawful due, that employers think he's a mental case and won't hire him, that throws him away like so much trash when he's no longer of use to the Military Industrial Complex. In short, "no pull trigger, no get food".

Lip service. When all is said and done about Veterans, more's been said than done.

That said, I got my Veterans' benefits at a time when there was no concentrated demand for them and the VA was struggling to find enough Vets who needed them to stay in some other business besides geriatrics. Now that there's a huge surge in demand it's all about begrudging spending the money and our nation and Vets are the poorer for it.

When the U.S. Navy deploys a battle fleet on exercises, it takes the security of its aircraft carriers very seriously indeed.

At least a dozen warships provide a physical guard while the technical wizardry of the world's only military superpower offers an invisible shield to detect and deter any intruders.

American military chiefs have been left dumbstruck by an undetected Chinese submarine popping up at the heart of a recent Pacific exercise and close to the vast U.S.S. Kitty Hawk - a 1,000ft supercarrier with 4,500 personnel on board.

By the time it surfaced the 160ft Song Class diesel-electric attack submarine is understood to have sailed within viable range for launching torpedoes or missiles at the carrier.

According to senior Nato officials the incident caused consternation in the U.S. Navy.

Boy would I like to be a fly on the wall in SecNav's office right about now!

Hey, kids, it's Veterans' Day, and what better way is there to celebrate than to fuck a soldier in the foxhole? Or at least that's the ongoing hilarious queer fear that's pervading the conversation over finally putting a bullet in the back of the skull of Don't Ask Don't Tell. The public and members of the military tell pollsters, in large majorities, either "Okey-dokey" or "Who gives a happy monkey fuck?" when asked if they think gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly in the armed services. So, of course, it looks like Democrats are gonna cave to the last people in America who still think Sgt. Joey Sissypants is gonna get rapey in the barracks with his troops or conjuring a lip-licking bull dyke who stands in the women's shower and thinks, "Smorgasbord."

An account of some Congressional lip-flapping that will make you shake your head at its ridiculousness ensues.

You know what would honor veterans today? To treat soldiers like grown-ups.

Unlike McCain and his ilk, who should be treated like the throwbacks they are. Perhaps it's just that their drool buckets and Depends need changing.

To all of you who either flip-flopped your wishy-washy ideals and switched your vote from bluish to reddish this past election because Obama and the lukewarm Dems failed to solve all world problems in 700 days, or because you got yourself so emotionally riled up/mentally watered down by the sexy caveman grunts of the Tea Party that you actually bought the BS line about being "mad as hell" about nothing even remotely coherent.

Oh darling, it's so very true. The fun-filled news is, despite all the bluster and rhetoric, thinly veiled racism and rampant Islamophobia on display, the new army of jittery, anti-everything GOP bobbleheads that you just voted into office doesn't care a single iota about you, or your haphazard values, or what you sometimes occasionally stand for. And what's more, deep down, you secretly know it.

You don't have to believe me. Just wait until nothing at all is done to service the Tea Party non-agenda, because it's ridiculous and impossible to service. Just wait until you note how there is no actual shrinking of government, no restoring some bogus sepia-toned idealism that never existed, no saving of your job. There is, of course, but one GOP agenda: furthering their personal stranglehold on all things powermad and avaricious.

But truly, the issues themselves don't matter. For what Boehner & Co value most is not so much making any sort of significant change in American culture, but rather, in keeping the anger, the dread, the paranoia alive.

In other words, they care most about keeping you in the lower, plebian castes all riled and blind as long as possible. This way, power lies. This way we find war and military expenditure and all manner of misprision, torture, environmental rape, WMD and homophobia, you name it. Just ask Karl Rove. Hey, it's a platform. It worked for Dubya. Well, sort of.

Let's be perfectly clear: The modern Republican party has one masterful, godlike skill unmatched by any other org in this century: Its leaders are geniuses at deceit, at leading throngs of blind believers into rabbit holes of war and fear and factual inaccuracy, often using an aggressively dumbed-down form of Christianity as a trump card. Sexual dread, mistrust of youth, of women, of gays, foreigners, of the ever-changing cultural landscape? It's in the DNA. And the Tea Party chugged it like Coors-flavored heroin.

And the Dems? The Dems wish they could be that masterful. Progressives are just terribly weak in fearmongering. There is something about the liberal spirit that values independent thought and self-determination, that defies screaming eye-glazed megachurch groupthink dread. This makes it tough to hold power for very long. It's so much easier to rally around sameness, conformity, institution, fear of the Other. Right, Karl?

Proof? Look no further than the GOP's leaders and mouthpieces: Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, O'Reilly and Fox News and even newly minted Senate demigod Mitch McConnell, et al. There are almost no liberal equivalents to these professional liars, warmongers, kingmakers and overlords. In the category of media and message manipulation, the libs have proven disastrous.

More.

Note to the teabaggers: You just shot your own foot off because you had an ingrown toenail. Fine. Trouble is, you shot everybody's foot off. Maybe you'll find out you were worked like a redheaded stepchild, maybe you won't, but we all have to live with your mistake, you fuckin' idiots.

Following up on the post just below this one, the Birthday dinner was terrific. I didn't know anyone when I got there, but I did when I left. One of my table mates was a Captain in 10th Marines (artillery). He was at Camp Lejeune when I was there and went on a Med cruise with my old outfit, 3/8, a year or so before I got there. Neither of us had met anybody else that had been to Vieques so we had a lot to talk about. That was brought home by Mrs. G when I noticed I was the last one eating - "Well of course you are! You haven't shut up since the food got here!". Heh.

Dinner was soup, salad, rolls, a humungoid ribeye done perfectly to my specs ("Tear off its horns, wipe its ass, and walk it through a warm room!"), baked potato (the finest butter/sour cream/chives delivery system known to man), and some veggies that were a little too al dente for my no dente. It was excellent. And of course, a piece of birthday cake.

Following tradition, the first and second piece of cake go to the oldest and youngest Marine present. Here they cut it together with a very nice cake knife:

Click to embiggen

The gent on the left enlisted in 1942 and spent WWII in the Solomon Islands (Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Vella Lavella, etc.) as a ground crew chief in the Marine Air Wing.

The younger gent enlisted in 2001 and did a tour each in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tradition was served. The older generation symbolically handed down the tribal memory to the younger.

Me 'n Mrs. G had a great time and will be back next year.

As an afterthought, I didn't notice the blonde in the blue dress until I downloaded the photo. I'll definitely be back next year!

Please notice that the new Commandant (who has already tripped over his dick on DADT. Heh.) and the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps are delivering their message from our masthead photo at 1:37. You're welcome and it is our pleasure, gentlemen.

Of note in the video:

The custom is that a person is considered to be a Marine upon completion of boot camp. Pvt. Hector Cafferata was in a reserve unit which was activated and sent to Korea before he had a chance to do that. I think he qualifies as a Marine anyway.

Lt. Chew-Een Lee was just a fightin' m**********r who could yell at the Chinese in their own language.

I'm going to a Birthday Dinner this evening at the Sierra Valley Lodge up in Calpine (ePodunk), which is where people go to get away from the hustle and bustle of our Big City of 14,000 people. Sierra County has so few people that it doesn't even have its own jail.

My expectations for truthful revelation in Bush's book, after his comment, were naturally low. I have not been disappointed. In fact, Deception Points might have been a more appropriate title.

I think that's becoming the generally accepted opinion.

The president appears in this book to live in Htrae, the Bizarro world of DC Comics where society is ruled by the code that "Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!" To that might be added: Us hate truth

The Chimp'll sell a million copies of his self-serving tripe. To journalists and pundits on both sides who will either consider it proof of his greatness or to debunk his criminal chimpness.

Yesterday afternoon, Sarah Palin showed up at a Christian school in a Philadelphia exurbs bearing sugar cookies. By the time she left night, the former governor and possible would-be 45th president of the United States had launched nothing less than a holy war for the nation's political future.

Most people in the media paid more attention to the cookies.

And rightly so. She's done the most damage to this country that is conceivably possible in the longest fifteen minutes of fame in recorded history. I hope her fifteen minutes is about up.

Tucker Carlson Sent Insulting E-mails To Philadelphia Columnist While Posing As Keith Olbermann

After MSNBC host Keith Olbermann was briefly suspended for making campaign donations to three Democrats, Philadelphia Daily News Stu Bykofsky columnist wrote a piece about the controversy. Bykofsky sought comment from Olbermann, e-mailing the address keith@keitholbermann.com. Shortly after publishing his column, he receieved a reply. The e-mail, claming to be from Olbermann, insulted Bykofsky, calling him “pathetic” and “beneath contempt.” It went on to insult MSNBC chief Phil Griffin, saying that he isn’t “intellectually qualified” to be Olbermann’s boss. Here is the reply in its entirety:

Ooh! Not nice!

Yet Yahoo News soon discovered that the e-mails were not from Olbermann at all. In a statement given to the site, MSNBC confirmed that the e-mails were not from their host. “Mr. Bykofsky has been, I would suggest, hoist on his own petard,” Olbermann told Yahoo News.

So who was replying from the address keith@keitholbermann.com? Yahoo News’s Michael Calderone reported this past summer that Tucker Carlson, the editor-in-chief of the conservative blog The Daily Caller, purchased the address. “We want to be the Keith Olbermann superstore,” Carlson said at the time. “We want to be your first and last stop for Keith Olbermann analysis.” In a phone interview with Carlson Tuesday night, Yahoo News confirmed with Carlson that he was behind the emails. “Could you resist?” Carlson told them. “It was just too funny. The flesh is weak.”

Ah, but the void between his ears is strong.

Carlson’s juvenile attacks do not reflect well on The Daily Caller. At the time of the Caller’s launch, Carlson wrote that it is “primarily a news site. We see our core job as straightforward: Find out what’s happening and tell you about it. We plan to be accurate, both in the facts we assert and in the conclusions we imply. If we’re not, tell us. We’ll fix it immediately.” One has to wonder how Carlson plans to fix his latest act of deception.

Fuck him. He's slid from being resident wingnut asshole understudy to Bob Novak at CNN to being the editor of a blog nobody's ever heard of. Not much of a job to get fired from and he's his own boss, but I hope he does the right thing for once in his pathetic life and fires himself. As a 'journalist', The Twit's career has already peaked with his appearance on 'Dancing With The Stars'. The bottom's not much farther, and this incident will hopefully be the final push he deserves.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

The Republican governor of New Jersey spent big money on luxury hotels without proper justification, a new Justice Department report reveals.

The Justice Department's inspector general also found that Christie had "excessive" charges for travel. In the two trips to London and Boston cited, the governor spent $798 on car service.

If bobbers in the limo qualify as 'car service', I got no problem with it if next time, Christie, you get two blow jobs and give me one of 'em.

This is the same asshole who raised taxes, including seniors' property taxes, and cut state funding to a variety of things including education. Don't you dare run for President on 'cut taxes', dickhead. Never mind. You will.

We all know that taxes are going to go through the roof one of these days, and government spending needs to be sharply reduced, and it's Repug liars like this one who caused it. They'll just blame Democrats.

But, seriously, there's gotta be some dark shit in there, where you're eyeballs deep in a pile of Bolivian blow in some rathole motel in Nuevo Laredo, cutting yourself with the shattered remains of a bottle of Jack Daniels you just polished off, getting your asshole eaten out by an old Mexican whore while jacking off on a picture of your mom, screaming, "I got your pearl necklace, Mother, I got it right here." That's a fuckin' drinking story.

4. You write about 9/11, "We were going to find out who did this, and kick their ass." How'd that work out?

5. Fuck you. Fuck your bullshit justifications. We were there. Some of us know what really happened. So fuck your impenetrable clusterfuck rationalizing, your tautology of excuses. You're pissed that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, but you doesn't regret the war. You actually come across convinced of your lies, and now your former employees are out there making sure that you are remembered as the guy who took tough, decisive action when it was necessary. And even if that's true, taking action doesn't mean that you did the right thing. You can firmly say, "Here's the road we're traveling on." Doesn't mean that it ain't the road to the mine field and sodomy pit. The failure to admit that is the damnation we all have to deal with. But your lackeys want us all to just get over it and move on.

You can smooth those edges, W. The hole you left, though, well, we'll all be long gone before we see if it ever closes.

Bush needs a long time in a small barred room to ponder the wrong he has done without any ameliorating influences.

And to quote The Rude One: Fuck you, Bush, you lyin' sack of elite shit.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Not this year. This was the year that Democrats had a gubernatorial nominee in Jerry Brown who was too old and disconnected to be able to appeal to the Democratic base that he would need. This was the year that Meg Whitman would absolutely overwhelm the market with her unlimited personal fortune and allow the other Republicans not to have to worry about resources. This was year that Barbara Boxer was supposed to get her stiffest challenge yet from a "moderate Republican" in Carly Fiorina who would be able to peel off the women that Boxer needed to win re-election in an uphill environment. The year that there wouldn't be any way for Democrats to hold the office of attorney general because they had nominated a multiracial woman from San Francisco to run for the top law enforcement office in the state. The year where we could have also lost the spot of lieutenant governor because we had a supposedly polarizing figure in Gavin Newsom going up against a "moderate" Republican Latino, Abel Maldonado.

None of it happened. The statewide races were all routs, with the exception of the attorney general's race, where Harris has for most of the counting held a sliver of a lead. So the question is...why did the red tidal wave halt at the Sierra Nevadas? And how can Democrats elsewhere take advantage?

In the witty 1966 classic cult film King of Hearts, a British soldier shows up in a French village run by lunatics after they'd escaped from the local insane asylum as the German Army retreated. Given the number of electoral victories by crazies in the mid-term elections, President Barack Obama might learn more from watching this movie than listening to all the talking heads in Washington.

An engine room fire that began early this morning on board CARNIVAL SPLENDOR has been extinguished but the ship remains without engine power while emergency generators are in use for ships’ services.

The 113,000-ton CARNIVAL SPLENDOR was on the first leg of a seven day cruise from Long Beach, CA and remains drifting approximately 55 miles west of Punta San Jacinto, Mexico with 3,299 passengers and 1,167 crew members on board.

...

I can happily say that (after 20 years and 30-odd cruises) I've never been on one that had to get towed in.

by planning hundreds of hearings, investigations and creating oversight committees. aren't the rethugs complaining on how much the government is spending? yet, it's ok to splurge on these unwarranted "investigations" into things that are only in their imagination. how much of the taxpayers money did kenneth starr use to find out that *gasp* president clinton had a consentual affair with an intern?

Of course. These Master of the Universe are the producers, the people who make this nation's wealth so that parasites won't starve. They can't be held to the same silly standards of behavior to which the rest of us are held -- if they have to take something as prosaic as "risk" into account, the whole system will break down. And if these Very Superior People (also known as "Gods") are kept down by some bourgeois notions of "personal responsibility" it will be the poor who end up paying the price because there won't be any small change available to help the unfortunates they runs over with their Bentleys.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Republicans didn't sweep these elections for grand ideological reasons, but because not enough of the Democratic base showed up to vote. Exit polls also show that angry voters who flocked to Republicans will end up disappointed in their actual policies. And in 2012, Democrats will be ready.

Think so, huh? Democrats? Ready? With the balls to take advantage of a political gimme if it pisses off the Repugs? That'll be the day.

It just goes ta show ya that if you violate company policy by donating to Democratic candidates without approval and get into a pissin' contest with management by refusing to apologize on air, that if you're making enough money for one of the largest companies in the Military Industrial Complex you get a well-deserved long weekend as punishment.

For all y’all rich folks, enjoy that champagne, or whatever fancy ass Scotch you drink.

And for y’all a bit lower on the economic scale, enjoy your Pabst Blue Ribbon, or whatever shitty ass beer you favor.

Whatever the case, and whatever your economic station, know this…

You need to drink up.

And quickly.

And heavily.

Because your time is limited.

In forty years or so, maybe fewer, there won’t be any more white people around who actually remember that Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, Opie-Taylor-Down-at-the-Fishing Hole cornpone bullshit that you hold so near and dear to your heart.

It’s OK. Because in about forty years, half the country will be black or brown. And there is nothing you can do about it.

Nothing, Senõr Tancredo.

Nothing, Senõra Angle, or Senõra Brewer, or Senõr Beck.

Loy tiene muy mal, hijo de Puta.

And I do not mean by that your physical destruction. We don’t play those games. We’re not into the whole “Second Amendment remedies, militia, armed resistance” bullshit that your side fetishizes, cuz, see, we don’t have to be. We don’t need guns.

We just have to be patient.

And wait for you to pass into that good night, first politically, and then, well…

Daddy Frank on the spectacular mis-timing of Obama's trip ti India and other things:

[...] Nothing says “outsourcing” to the American public more succinctly than India. But the White House didn’t figure this out until the eve of Obama’s Friday departure, when it hastily rebranded his trip as a jobs mission. Perhaps the president should visit one of the Indian call centers policing Americans’ credit-card debts to feel our pain.

You can’t win an election without a coherent message. Obama, despite his administration’s genuine achievements, didn’t have one. The good news — for him, if not necessarily a straitened country — is that the G.O.P. doesn’t have one either. This explains the seemingly irrational calculus of Tuesday’s exit polls. Voters gave Democrats and Republicans virtually identical favorability ratings while voting for the G.O.P. They gave Obama a slightly higher approval rating than either political party even as they punished him. This is a snapshot of a whiplashed country that (understandably) doesn’t know whose butt to kick first. It means that Obama can make a comeback, but only if he figures out what he has to come back from and where he has to go.

But there was no plan. Even in victory, most Republicans can’t explain exactly what they want to do besides cut taxes and repeal health care (a quixotic goal, given the president’s veto pen and the law’s more popular provisions). A riotous dissection of this empty agenda could be found on election night on MSNBC, where a Republican stalwart, Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, called for “across the board” spending cuts. Under relentless questioning from Chris Matthews, she exempted defense and entitlements from the ax, thereby eliminating some 85 percent of the federal budget from her fiscal diligence.

The Repugs ain't got a clue other than to make Obama and the country fail.

Were they to listen to Americans, they’d learn that they favor budget cuts mainly in theory, not in fact. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll this summer found that three-quarters of Americans don’t want to cut federal aid to education — high on the hit list of most fiscal hawks — and more than 60 percent are opposed to raising the Social Security retirement age to 70. Even in the Republican-tilted electorate of last week, exit polls found that only 39 percent favored extending the Bush tax cuts to all Americans, including those making $250,000-plus. Yet it’s a full Bush tax cut extension that’s the entirety of the G.O.P. jobs program in 2010. This will end “uncertainty” among the wealthiest taxpayers, you see, and a gazillion jobs will trickle down magically from Jackson Hole.

Obama has a huge opening here — should he take it. He could call the Republicans’ bluff by forcing them to fill in their own blanks. He could start by offering them what they want, the full Bush tax cuts, in exchange for a single caveat: G.O.P. leaders would be required to stand before a big Glenn Beck-style chalkboard — on C-Span, or, for that matter, Fox News — and list, with dollar amounts, exactly which budget cuts would pay for them. Once they hit the first trillion — or even $100 billion — step back and let the “adult conversation” begin!

Better still, the president should open this bargaining session to the full spectrum of his opposition. As he said at his forlorn news conference on Wednesday, he is ready to consider policy ideas “whoever proposes them.” So why not cut to the chase and invite Congressional Tea Party heavyweights like Jim DeMint, Rand Paul and Michele Bachmann to the White House along with the official G.O.P. leadership? They will offer the specifics that Boehner and McConnell are too shy to divulge.

DeMint published a book last year detailing his view that Social Security be privatized to slow America’s descent into socialism. Paul can elaborate on his ideas for reducing defense spending and cutting back on drug law enforcement. Bachmann will explain her plans for weaning Americans off Medicare.

Maybe some of the big Tea Party ideas will be as popular as the Tea Partiers claim them to be. We won’t know until Congress tries to enact them. [...]

It's Autumn around here when the leaves turn the colors of the rainbow, the north wind begins to blow down the Hudson Valley, the clocks get set back, and the Cattle Dogs begin to blow out their summer coats.

Knowing the Brits and French like I do, I don't think this will go smoothly.

Hailed by London as a new chapter in their relations, under a newly agreed joint military force and an equipment-sharing arrangement, NATO allies the UK and France have consigned their traditional military rivalry to the past. Why?

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"... That's US here at the Brain! Sittin' all alone out in the cold, thanklessly freezin' our beboops off, lookin' for a chance to lob a few at the enemy and praying for a secondary explosion, wonderin' if it's all worth it or if it will make any difference in the scheme of things ..." - Gordon